As I mentioned my initial concern at the start of Roadside was the roadside vegetation was in a poor state, We now live in, and are surrounded by, a photographically given global world with its immense collection of digital photographs that form a seamless visual continuum. rather than a concern to enlargen the realm of the photographic space of photography as an established artistic medium with its ongoing process of experimental self-purification. If the decline of the hegemony of ‘medium’ means that photography is no longer an end, but a means, then it is the art institution that continues to the defend the system of the arts, conceived as mediums: painting and sculpture that were joined by photography, film, video and performance. This conventional medium-based approach defines their exhibition space.
In many cases the roadside vegetation was minimal, residual and uncared for; it was a space where people often dumped their household rubbish; there was no biodiversity in the roadside vegetation; and it was too minimal to function as wildlife corridors between the cleared agricultural fields for grazing or cropping.
My concern became more ecological as I walked along the back country roads. The roadside vegetation is what remains, or rather hangs on, after the land has been cleared. So much has been lost and only remnants have been saved. What is still growing on the side of the road — the trees, creepers, grasses and weeds — lacks biodiversity. There is little to no sign of any regrowth/regeneration happening within the roadside vegetation. There is just not enough vegetation for it to happen.
Humanity’s impact on the natural landscape is undeniable. The roadside often feels like a dead zone, especially when it is heavily covered in road dust during the long summer months. A slow death that indicates that, given the culture of agriculture, it is not possible to restore the surrounding agriculture land to its wild past. Planting trees through Landcare is just the beginning as long term care would be needed to establish a biodiverse landscape with understory species. This kind of caring for country is not going to happen.
Joyce Evans’ approach in her Edge of the Road sign posts a way forward. The Roadside project is not simply citational or superficially mimetic of the Edge of the Road as history has changed since the 1980s. We now live in, and are surrounded by, a photographically given global world with its immense collection of digital photographs that form a seamless visual continuum. The photographic image (ie., the constantly shifting set of technologies of image production such as chemical photography, film, television, video and digital imaging) has become the dominant visual form — the currently dominant form of the image as such. Secondly, the cultural context has also changed from the 1980s as the critical destruction of medium as an ontological category. This has opened up possibilities of an art freed of the restrictions imposed by conventionally conceived artistic mediums. This is a shift or a transition from an ontology of mediums (painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, film, video, performance) to a postconceptual ontology of art in general.
Maybe Roadside could provide a minor pathway into exploring the inter-relationships of the Anthropocene, country and photography where a warming planet is starting to fundamentally alter how the climate system operates.The earth is becoming hotter. If the highway into the critical issue of climate degradation is the aerial view, then Roadside’s minor country pathway may broaden and lead deeper into these inter-relationships. The danger lies in the beautification of environmental damage and destruction that thereby contributes to the spectacle of iconic images.
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